An ambulance carrying a patient struck a motorcycle carrying two riders, leaving one dead and another injured.
The ambulance driver, Kevin Ryan Gesta, 23, was counterflowing at high speed when it hit an oncoming motorcycle traveling in the proper lane. The impact threw the motorcycle driver, Juan Antonio Seares Ladioray, 19, and his passenger, Braille Nichole Kwek,18, off the bike.
Kwek, whose head was reportedly run over by one of the ambulance’s tires, died on the spot.
Cebu City logs approximately 500 road accidents monthly with some days registering as many as 24 accidents, 90 percent of which involve motorcycles.
I wasn’t aware of these numbers but I knew road accidents especially involving motorcycles were happening with increasing frequency and resulting in an alarming rate of fatalities because almost daily, I’d read about yet another road accident and yet another fatality.
I often warn our employees to take great care on the road — not to be overconfident even if they ride daily and travel long distances regularly on their motor bikes.
I tell them not to take chances, not to drive when sleepy or drunk, not to drive at breakneck speed, to follow the rules and to drive safely because they’re especially vulnerable with only their helmets to protect them.
I know they find me extra. But as my father used to tell me, better safe than sorry.
Whenever my father would warn me to be careful about something and I’d retort, what are the odds, he’d say it only takes one incident or accident — to change your life or someone else’s. Forever.
On a road trip to the north last year, I saw two riders on a motorcycle traveling at breakneck speed. I casually remarked to my driver, “Look at them. They’re driving so fast. One wrong move and they’re dead.”
Barely 10 minutes later, we saw both riders’ bodies sprawled on the road. One look at their ashen faces and motionless bodies and we knew they were gone. Their deaths didn’t even make it to the papers. Only on the radio.
So many lives lost on the road regularly, some don’t even make the news.
I understand emergency vehicles need to speed and sometimes counterflow to respond to an emergency but they should still take great care not to create another emergency or to take another life in the process of trying to save one.
We’ve become so desensitized to road tragedies, we don’t really care about road safety until a road accident hits close to home and happens to someone we know or care about.
Several times last year, I’d hear vehicles speeding down the road in the early hours of the morning almost as if they were racing. And without a care in the world for what could happen should they hit someone.
Our streets are not race tracks. These wannabe F1 drivers should think about the deadly consequences of their actions.
I don’t object to motorcycles so long as riders don’t try to act like motorists as well as pedestrians. What I object to are drivers of any type of vehicle who flout the rules and drive recklessly without regard for anyone.
Every road accident is a tragedy.
Yet, we’re no longer outraged or grief-stricken over a life lost on the road unless it’s someone young, someone promising or someone who comes from wealth or prominence.
Then, it becomes a headline, a tragedy, a cause everyone fashionably takes up.
Yet, it should not matter who they are: rich or poor, young or old, notable or nondescript. Their lives should matter. Their deaths should make us sit up and act to make our streets safer. Because one death is still one death too many.